Iscariot
by Angelas
Summary: "I know you're there," spoke Thranduil. "Don't be afraid." [three-shot, thorinduil]
1. Wintertide

**So the first part to this thing is sort of the backbone to the meat tbh.**  
**It just felt weird putting it all in one chapter. o;**

**~scurries away~**

**oOo**

When Thorin had first been met with the sight of an elf, he'd been but a lad with naught a hair on his face to call his own.

With his fingers strung tight against the coolness of the wall, and with his breathing forced short, he'd watch.

The elf had arrived into the long walkway of Erebor's mountain with a light of his own etched deep in his presence, smooth like linen against the coarse stone that brought him before the throne of Thror, so tall and so lithe, like a ghost of snow that came through the ice of winter, such outlandish a creature, but with skin as real as silver coins.

And Thorin would watch with a terrible shiver as the elf would tilt his golden head to the side—crowned with tall wooden splinters and with red berries twined—as threads of his long hair laxed like loose threads against the broadness and width of his shoulders.

So came the moment Thorin would come to learn the name Thranduil, last of elf kings, son of Oropher, and sole ruler of Mirkwood, as spoken by Thror and announced to the others.

And if sharp ears and freakish limbs and permanently hairless chins meant what an elf would be, then Thorin would deem them of far less worth than most things he'd seen, but be left a fool on the grounds that he could not possibly cease himself from staring.

And when finally his grandfather had stood on his feet after many long minutes of formal orations, Thorin had noticed with a hint of surprise that the elf and his stooges would indeed be taken to a great feast, a feat seldom practiced with those who were not at least dwarf-sons or kin.

Thorin thought quick to move from his hiding spot then, and placed himself instead in the shadows of the opposite hall where he would be able to see and to count each dwarf and each elf as they walked, one by one.

They strode through the lit shadows of the mountain with an assured confidence that Thorin could not understand, for their bodies seemed frail and malnourished, and their armor pathetic on the grounds that their castings could not possibly hold even the weight of an axe.

No furs and no malachite studs to show for their honor in battle nor for their winnings or glory, and no greatswords or wraps to show for their prowess on the weight of their backs.

So then why, Thorin thought, would Thror revel these creatures so readily, and why would he allow them a seat in dwarven repast?

He made himself small on his haunches against the cold steel of a basin, eyes now narrowed in spite, yet nearly lost the beat of his heart when the echoing sound of Thranduil's boots had nearly passed him, but suddenly stopped.

Thorin froze himself still, unable to move though he desperately willed himself to react.

Many of the elves, Thorin saw, seemed to have questioned their king, though each one had only received a subtle dismissal of Thranduil's hand until none but he and Thorin were left in the emptiness of the candle-lit hall.

Thorin's chest sunk quickly at the creeping suspicion that he'd finally been caught. He held his breath, hoping the drawn shadow of the basin would be sufficient enough to keep him well-enough masked.

"I know you're there," spoke Thranduil to him. "Don't be afraid."

And Thorin could have sworn on Mahal's great hammer that on that day he had heard the bones in him rattle to the echo of such a redoubtable voice. Deep and steady, like the great tide of an imminent storm.

And it _was_ a storm, and its tide had surely been set, but it was Thorin himself who would stand utterly stricken in its stead.

"I'm not afraid," he told the elf.

"Then come out."

So Thorin did, with much reluctance in his legs, until he stood himself as tall as he could go before Thranduil's great height, a height which could indeed tower over him just enough to send a tremble down the length of his spine.

Thranduil, seeming well-pleased, stared him down from beneath the dark hood of his lashes, eyes as cold and as blue as the frost that caked the old northern mountains.

"It would take someone clever to sneak about the darkness of these corridors and fool away your absence," spoke Thranduil. "But you are not just someone. I would ask for your name as a guest in your home, if you would but bequeath me the knowledge."

It took Thorin—young as he was—a moment of grand difficulty to be able to once again figure the right words to respond, or any words at all, a shameful ode to the conjuring of his dwarven courage just so that maybe he could manage the webbed sounds of his name, and only just that.

"Thorin," he'd said.

And Thranduil did not come to mock him, nor did he jest, though the high arch in his brow prosed perfectly his arrant amusement.

"A fine name," Thranduil told him. "Strong, like the king you will make in the rule of this mountain."

Thorin watched, red-faced, as the elf tilted his head to the side almost as he had at the throne before simply leaving Thorin alone in the cavernous reel of Erebor's hall, weak at the knees and with a vegetal scent left in the air that would later swamp Thorin's dreams for the several years that would come quick to claim him.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first been met with his palm against the flat of his cock, it'd been to the thought of the elf king.

But it wasn't just once, and it wasn't just twice, it had been countless the times in which he'd spend to the wish of having his hands against the hairless white skin that had always repulsed him.

And it was only the thought of the elf (if not the continual thought of a maiden) that would drive him to soil his hand, but it was solely the thought of slipping inside him that left Thorin mad and heaving from the aftermath.

And with time, happenstance would tell him that perhaps his pleas as a dwarfling had somehow gone answered, for the heart of the mountain had been found and the stone would demand the payment of homage, no matter the price. No longer would Thorin see the elf only from behind the darkness of walls on the very seldom occasion, no longer would he look up at him as a weak and tongue-tied lad, but as Prince Under the Mountain and by the side of the throne next to his powerful grandfather, and with his father on the opposite side.

With enough years Thorin had grown into the proper bulk of a Durin, and with them, a growing thick beard, but not even with Thorin's newly fledged courage would he dare himself to approach Thranduil closely, nor would he dare to speak to him unless he had no other option.

He'd watch him, instead, in petrified silence, behind the flicker of candles or from the far side of carousing feasts, wary with timings, for if he wasn't, there would be those undeniable and heartrending moments that left him with Thranduil's brilliant blue eyes set on his.

And Thranduil would not look away even once, but rather bring his long fingers to the casual plucking of fruit and cull upon a single red berry to the pink of his lips, watching Thorin as Thorin watched him back while he spread his mouth open enough to place it inside. And Thorin would be left unwillingly stirred in his seat, shifting and swallowing and hoping to nothing that the hardening from in between his legs would simply end.

For it was the way that Thranduil's hair would fall from his shoulders like golden wine spilt that left the thought of him so unforgiving, skin so fair and with the smooth line of his neck discretely exposed like woven white velvet; legs full and distressingly shaped and with the seam of his lips drawn wretchedly wetted—

And even then the elf was also deathless, and he was also king, untouched by age or scarring, an ancient thing that had seen wars and death and maybe worse and lived so long to tell it.

And though his gaze alone mirrored the excess of his self-love and impudent grace, there was also the undeniable fret in the way he would stare through discussions that told silent stories of sorrows and heartbreak.

But Thorin would also come to know heartbreak as fate would intend, pain rooted deep from his young and foolish dream to have someday touched the flaxen strands of Thranduil's hair, for the elf was to come as always on a warm and sunlit hour on the day the dragon came.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first felt the retch of spite, a wicked scourge would first mark the sky.

From above, a hurricane had ripped through whirls of fire, and Thorin had roared a mighty roar of warning to his father and to all the others that a dragon indeed had come; and in the precise moment that Thorin had come to behold the scorch of death upon the bodies of several dwarves he'd come to know the names of, he'd learn firsthand the grief of loss.

Vast flames and searing squalls from wings so massive soon enveloped the mountain in ash and cindered carnage, and only the vicious snarling of the fire drake known as Smaug would fill the autumn breeze of the Lonely Mountain from that day on.

Many perished and few would live, and when Erebor had all but fallen, Thorin had rushed through in a helpless craze to look beyond the east where the great cliff lay, the cliff in which he knew the Silvan elves must only be, for the equinox had struck on that same hour and the sun had shone and there was a fealty to be paid.

And there _were_ elves there, plenty aligned in saffron battalion with Thranduil on the back of an antlered beast to guide them, crowned high in wooden thorns and with his hair spilling down from his shoulders—lovely and lucid and timeless, last of elf kings—and so Thorin howled his harrowing plea with the screams of the burning marring sharp at his ears, frantic and raving, until at last Thranduil had met his eyes from so far above as he once had the day he'd caught him hiding from within the shadows of the mountain's stone halls.

And relief had almost crossed him—had almost _claimed_ him—the moment the elf had inclined his golden head to the side.

But it was not to be as Thorin would have foolishly thought, for elves were frail and honorless creatures with no sense of valor nor courage nor pride, and of course they would have given their backs.

So Thorin could only just watch with blackened contempt awakened in the pit of his heart as the herd of them fled along into the wood of the drop like a flock of wounded rats, gone into the distance, never to be seen or heard of again.

And Thorin had cursed them from the very core of his lungs until he could no longer shout from the pain of his cries as he stood there amongst smoldering ruins, mad with rage and with his home left in crumbled remains, the blooded wound of betrayal pulsing raw in his chest as he looked all around him, to the torn bodies of his friends and to the charred bodies of babes, and to the sight of an entire kingdom flayed—

He cursed them.

**Hated**.

And he would never forget.

**oOo**


	2. Shallow Shores

**trying very hard to whip this thing out as fast as possible before it leaves me to die tbh~ o;**

**one more part to go!**

**oOo**

When Thorin had first rallied friends of his own so that he could go forth to claim back the lost throne of the mountain from Smaug, the old forest of Mirkwood would come to stand in his path.

With ten in his company and a generous halfling and his two sister-sons, he would be fated to cross it, and learn quickly of its terrible land.

And it _was_ terrible, for its ground moved and spun in continual vertigos whilst thick webs of monstrous spiders blocked and hid away all the sun. So despite the grey wizard's cautions and various warnings, Thorin soon realized that he'd managed to get them all lost.

They roamed and scoured for even a shred of a footpath for what could have been hours, but the debris and the perpetual stinging of imminent hunger made it nearly impossible to even begin to focus their eyes.

And when Thorin supposed that at least things could not possibly worsen, the spiders that prowled the dank shadows around them pounced with their poisonous fangs bared from both and all sides.

Hideous creatures they were with thick heavy hairs bulging from the tallow staves of their legs, moving like lightning despite their sizable heft. And though each dwarf stood bravely on their feet with their weapons well drawn, most would find themselves swinging at nothing in the nearing dimness of dusk.

And before Thorin himself could barely just sink his sword into the swollen belly of one of the incoming beasts, a great sleight came echoing towards them from somewhere within the murk of the trees.

They (whatever they were) swarmed in like insects, great wooden bows and double-edged daggers held in their hands, cutting down what was left of the creatures and leaving not one to maybe survive.

Congealed in surprise, Thorin noticed whilst he stood there quite dumbly, that the swarm of intruders who had taken their glory were indeed the witless brown elves of the wood, and with their sharp pointy ears and wretched complexions, Thorin growled quietly his genuine scorn.

Wasting no time, each one of the dwarves took quick to formation, baring the sharper ends of their weapons to any of those who would stare for even a moment too long.

There was one particular elf among them, however, who stood himself tall at the very head of the pack. One, who for some odd and unsettling reason, did not come to look at all like the rest of the flock. With woven white skin, and with a long spill of gilt hair, he swiftly approached and just as swiftly drew the length of his bow mere inches away from Thorin's glowering face.

"Do not think I would not kill you, dwarf," he spat, the arc of it creaking with the strung flex of the arrow he'd drawn. "A pleasure it would be, in fact."

Thorin, despite the rage at his throat, knew it best to have held his tongue.

They were outnumbered, after all, starving, tired, and weak. And on a single whim of the elf's white hand, Thorin's head might lie pierced, and all of his efforts for nothing.

So when the elf gave the order, the rest of his kind searched them like thieves in an alley, taking their weapons and most of their belongings. Thorin could only seethe as he watched on, his hands twitching against the haft of his sword.

But that too was soon taken from him.

"This is an ancient thing," the leader-elf mused, inspecting the blade in what little light there was. "Forged by my kin. Where did you get this?"

Thorin glared, his nostrils flaring.

"It was given to me."

And it wasn't really a lie.

Immediately, the elf bared the sharp end of the blade at the skin of his neck, nearly pushing him back into the ground.

"Not only a thief," he said. "But a liar, as well."

And then the elf shouted an order and all of the others he led took each dwarf by the wrists and roped together their hands as if they were nothing but cattle. But before Thorin could abandon all hope to both their journey and possible escape, Bofur turned towards him through somewhere in the chaos and whispered, very urgently:

_"Thorin, where's Bilbo?"_

Indeed Thorin looked from around him and did not see a sign of the halfling. He grinned, allowing one of the elves to take him away without much of a fight.

Hope lingered yet.

They were herded along through the dells of the wood for what felt like hours, until finally the darkness of the dusk began to brighten and the sun itself began to shine through great fissures of leaves, revealing a fortress not far that might have almost touched the top of the forest's canopy.

A palace, thought Thorin.

A cage.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first learned of the hospitality of elves, he and his company had been jailed down like animals.

With no food and no drink.

Not until after Balin's dreadfully humbled words, that is.

"We've no food," he'd said to one of the guards. "No drink. My friends and I will surely parch within the hour."

Only then did the elf-guards lift a finger to place scraps of food through the clefts of the pens out of what must have been pity.

Thorin's belly roared in a terrible ache as he stared at what had been given to him (bread and water and halves of apples, and the bread was warm and soft, but even that didn't matter), but like both of his nephews, he refused to even touch it.

He heard Dwalin from the opposite pen ruthlessly throw himself at the bars with the force of a bear, and with him soon followed Fili and Kili. Balin spoke up after a moment however, and told them very calmly that what they did was a useless endeavor, for these were no orcish crates, these were the elven dungeons of Mirkwood, and not one of them would be let free if not with the king's consent.

Thorin scoffed, spitting to the side.

"Will they starve us, then? Fatten us like horses? Will we sit here and try nothing?"

"We wait, Thorin," said Balin. "Your name is no secret. They will want to know our purpose, and why we came to roam the wood."

"A purpose they will not know," shot Thorin loud enough so that the elven guards outside could hear him. "They will let us go, or each one of them will face Mahal's wrath!"

Other dwarves followed in his cry, earning them nothing but a kick to one of the cells. Balin, shaking his head, sighed softly to himself.

Hours must have passed them at a point, but not one of the dwarves relented in their shouts nor their curses. Not until, of course, most of them fell fast asleep from sheer exhaustion.

That's when the leader-elf from before came down for the wooden footsteps of the dungeon, a sort of self-loving swagger plastered all about him. Thorin foamed at the mouth at the mere sight of him, going immediately to clench at the bars.

"Let us out, you pilfering fool!" he thundered. "You know nothing of whom you've crossed!"

In time, the elf stopped himself precisely in front of Thorin's cell, mere inches away, the obvious leer on the thin of his lips looming through in the way he looked down at Thorin.

"You will assess yourself, dwarf," he said simply. "Or you will regret the use of your mouth."

Fuming, Thorin quieted himself. And though he longed for the sweet sight of the elf's arrogant mouth crushed against the weight of his fist, even he knew how a rightful king should attempt to behave in the face of all this.

He scowled, instead, snarling.

"The king calls for a private audience," the elf told him. "And named you by name. You will be escorted to the washrooms so that you may cleanse the silt from your face. You will be dressed in robes that do not reek so foully of sweat, and you _will_ behave yourself upon it, lest your wishes lie in the pit of an early grave."

"Do not dare tell me what to do, _filth_!" retorted Thorin with outrage. "Do not—"

But then the elf grabbed him through the brace of the bars, reeling him in by the collar with a strength in his arm so massive that Thorin could not even begin to understand it.

"Do not test me, dwarf," said the elf. "My patience wears thin."

So Thorin (despite the venom clot in throat) quieted himself once more and allowed himself to be taken easily enough from his cell.

And out of all the dwarves, Balin was the only of them left awake to watch him walk by and be led towards the steps of the exit, a knowing look knit upon his face.

For his friends, thought Thorin, and for the lost glory of Erebor, he would endure even this.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first learned the terror of being bathed against his will, many elves had been harmed in the process.

He kicked and squirmed as if he were to be drowned, and he might as well have been drowned, for the tub he was placed in was perhaps thrice his size, and the water drawn up just as high, so much so that it was a miracle that he had even made it out alive.

For he had bore the slime of elvish soap upon his head that day, as well as the spice of seeds upon the seat of the tub to scent him as he were a piece of furniture to be exchanged.

But one thing Thorin did not allow under any circumstance, was the touching or the undoing of his beard. And when one of the elves had dared to try it, Thorin had bitten down hard on the hand that'd come too near.

He was treated less kindly after that, but at least he still held the broader dollop of his pride. As for the robe that he was presented to wear (a frail miserable thing meant for not even the ilk of whoring or flower-picking), he tore apart as if it were no less than the harbinger of plague.

He dressed in his previous wraps and furs, instead. Marked with grime and cobweb and worse, but at least they fit him properly, and at least they were sewn and platted in traditional dwarven fashion.

He was taken once more by the leader-elf after that, drenched still and angry, herded along like a lamb through the long wooden walkways of Mirkwood's palace.

Thorin hooded his eyes at the sight of it all, for its architecture was but a joke at the heels of even the lesser types of dwarven dwellings.

No stone, no metal, and no gilded ceilings. Plain timber, rather, carved out and shaped without at least the core foundations of rock.

A small flame, thought Thorin, would be all it would take before its utter ruin.

"Where are you taking me?" implored Thorin. "What is stopping me from simply killing you as I speak?"

The leader-elf chuckled from behind him, saying nothing.

Thorin remained quiet for the rest of the way until at last they stopped at a large door unlike all the others they'd passed before it.

Thorin, very subtly, looked around him.

Indeed they were alone in the cavernous reel of that particular corridor, and the elf had already cut through the ropes of his restraints. If Thorin could just gain the upper hand with the heft of his fists and steal at least one of the blades that hung from the elf's back, he could run for an escape.

He was no foolish dwarf, after all, for all along Thorin had been learning and drawing out the large plains of the place in his head like a sharp stick through sand. And if all went as planned, he could easily find his way back to the dungeons, free his friends, best the guards, and perhaps even meet Bilbo Baggins somewhere along the chaos.

And the halfling was clever (oh so clever), clever enough that he would undoubtedly know where to go (and where to hide, need be) until they finally reached the opposite border of the wood, and make their way once again towards the summit of the Lonely Mountain with the grey wizard at their side to guide them once more.

Wasting no time, and thinking no further on the gaping holes in his plan, Thorin spun fast on his heel and immediately braced himself to leap against the elf with all of his weight, in hopes that he could bring them both to the ground where the fight would be fair.

But Thorin learned quickly that the elf was already behind him, prosed with daggers crossed and bared against the blood-throb of his neck.

"I would strike you where you stand, dwarf," hissed the elf. "Were it not for my father's leniency stamped upon your head."

At the end of those words, Thorin found himself frozen over.

He paused in his breathing as if he'd been beheaded already, a foul weight suddenly pressing down into the mechanical pulse of his heartbeat.

He saw it now, as if he'd never once seen it already, here, in the candled lighting of Mirkwood's hallways: the color of the leader-elf's hair.

The length of it.

The spill of it.

The gold of it, like strings of threaded diamonds.

And his eyes (this time so clear in Thorin's), shone brilliantly blue in the lurid charms of their color.

Like ice, like a ghost of snow, like the frost that caked the peaks of northern mountains, but as real as silver coins.

"You.."

The elf rose a single dark brow, perplexed by Thorin's unexpected show of repose. He spoke some wry comment through the fog of the moment, though Thorin had failed to hear his words.

For he could hear only the sound of his own ragged breathing the instant the great door before him had opened from its opposite side, and could only just hardly contain the awakened rage in the pit of his tongue the moment something very fair from years long since past met his eyes like a blunted axe struck deep into the red flesh of his heart.

So tall and so lucid, like the elder stars the Silvan worshipped, stood there with his simper of a serpent, the last of elf kings.

Deathless, untouched by his lifetime of centuries, an ancient thing wrought from the shallow shores of fallen Beleriand, a gust of winter wind.

"Legolas," said Thranduil. "You will lower your knives."

**oOo**


	3. Only War

**you guys no idea how taxing this was on my soul. but holy shit i cannot believe i have completed this piece. ;-;**

**elven translations at the end, in case you are interested in wth these elves are saying~**

**oOo**

When Thorin had first understood that the elf who had imprisoned his friends in the dungeons of Mirkwood had indeed been Thranduil's son, Thorin felt as though he would keel over and vomit from the utter shame of it all.

He glared, wholly envenomed at the way Thranduil had so casually looked away from him as if he were not a thing at all to be minded, a thing never there.

"Is this such a way to welcome our guest?" asked Thranduil.

And how brilliant he was even then, impossibly lucid, draped heavy in a set of carefully layered fabrics. Yet, for all his lavish adornments, he wore no crown nor wreath upon his head to show for his ruling;

He did not need it.

He stepped away from the door, lending way into his chambers.

Instantly, Legolas siezed Thorin by the back of the collar, reeling him in without much of an effort until at last they stopped somewhere in the middle of the enormous room, mere feet away from where Thranduil stood before them.

Thorin watched, embittered, as Legolas then sunk down to one knee, his neck craned towards the ground in a gesture of what looked like an elvish way of submitting.

Thorin scoffed.

A dwarf would never think to bend his knee so low to the dirt of the ground. Not even to his king.

"_Goheno nin, adar_," said Legolas before standing. "But I fail to understand what great use this creature-thief may bring to you here."

Thorn's vision went red. Then he laughed. Low and bitter, but the sound of it echoed easily enough into even the highest grottos of the room.

"_Snakes,_" he bit, spitting to the ground. "The lot of you. Cowering in the pits of the earth—like worms, like rats, but _worse_. May you all be slain. May you all be cursed!"

Then, as if finally taking note of Thorin, Thranduil's attention lowered itself towards him.

Thorin, despite his rising anger, felt himself going stalk still from underneath the elf king's stare, for Thorin could very nearly feel the ice of Thranduil's gaze encrust the bones in his chest far quicker and far more painfully than if he'd gone and stripped himself into the frozen crux of Forochel's winds.

A moment more, he thought, and he would surely break.

"Release him," said Thranduil. "If he runs, he will be caught. And when he is caught, he will be thrown back into the dungeons where he will rot. Allow him the choice of it."

Without question, Legolas did as he was told. He pushed Thorin forward, closer towards Thranduil, and sure enough, Thorin did not make a move for escape.

Instead, he found himself scowling a pitiful scowl by even the lowest of dwarven standards, struck full-force by a muteness he would never be able to fully explain. Like this, in the face of Thranduil, after so many years of having hated the whole of him, of having wished him nothing more than a terrible death, Thorin could not, for the life of him, spare himself the dignity to have at least looked away.

"Legolas," spoke Thranduil. "Tend to the guard and leave us."

This time, however, Legolas seemed to have hesitated at Thranduil's command. He stepped forward, flagrant concern writ in the way he looked at his father.

"_Adar_," he began,_ "sina naugh, ta naa ascarer_—"

"_Dina sii_," hissed Thranduil, and the sound of it was very cold. "You will do as I say, and nothing more outside of it."

There was a silence, and then a toil of the brow, and then Legolas nodded and gave a firm but shallow bow before turning on his heel without another word from his mouth. The door, in the wake of his leaving, slammed shut with a great bellowing clash, rattling the walls, and in turn liberating Thorin from whatever elvish incantation had construed him all along.

"Forgive his demeanor," said Thranduil after a moment. "He is not too terribly keen in the welcoming of.. wanderers."

Thorin's hands clawed themselves into fists, cutting skin, and in his woken fury he entertained quietly the hinging opportunity of perhaps tossing himself at Thranduil so that he could inflict at least a small portion of the pain the elf had left in the wake of all his treachery.

The tearing of his wretched hair, thought Thorin, would be a good beginning.

Thorin faltered in this, however.

For in all his hate, he was no foolish dwarf. He knew perfectly that though Thranduil's face was sweet and lovely and seemingly just, he was in no way akin to that of the elf lord Elrond, and that Thranduil's jaded cruelty made it so that his threat held more than just its weight in truth, and that the elf would indeed be more than willing to doom Thorin and all of those with him to the everlasting filth of the dungeons.

"I do not wander," spat Thorin, instead.

"But you have," offered Thranduil, and it was a cruel knife to Thorin's racing heart the way Thranduil's lips had charmed themselves into a grin. "Here, within my borders, armed with weapons and without my summons and shouting vicious threats to all who pass—most would deem it an intrusion."

"If I had hoped to _intrude_ upon this miserable tunnel I would have brought an army, I would have brought _torches_—"

"But you have no army, and you have no torches," said Thranduil simply. "In fact, you have nothing."

"Aye, I have nothing," bit Thorin, braving himself forward. "And you are the curse of it! You have shamed me, scorned me, encaged my friends, abandoned your loyalties to the throne of Erebor, and betrayed the entirety of my people! We came to you once—starving! Homeless! Seeking your help! And to whom, I wonder, does the fault of it linger as my people wept to the turning of your back, as they suffered, labored, and _died_—"

But then Thranduil stiffened where he stood in all of his freakish height and even Thorin took note of it enough to have forgotten the rest of what he was going to say.

"You would look to seed the blame of a kingdom's ruin beyond those in the ruling of it with the utter senselessness of a crass and throneless child," thundered Thranduil. "You could not in any way argue the circumstances of it, you could not _truly_ continue to believe so very blindly that it would have made even the slightest of a difference had I descended with what few in my stead to the aid of Thror who had long ago ebbed into the foulness of his greed, _of such sickness_, whilst we bathed ourselves in the scorch of a dragon's flame for the sake of one fallen city when _continents_ have fallen all the same—"

And then Thranduil stopped himself, deathly silent, as if only just now he'd realized his name.

He turned away, his long hair flitting with him.

Thorin could find nothing to say. He stood there, staring, and if it weren't for the change he'd seen firsthand in the eyes of Thranduil, he wouldn't have believed the elf king (or any elf, really) capable of feeling.. anything.

But a dwarf was no elf, and a dwarf felt freely without any ilk or need of constraint.

And what Thorin felt in the pith of his heart was a seething venom for the sight of Thranduil and nothing much else outside of a shapeless hate, and what he saw with his eyes was an elf gone yet unpunished by fate.

Yet, Thorin could not for the life of him look away.

Could not _want_ to look away.

Because looking away meant not seeing a second more of him.

"Why do you linger, son of Thrain. Here, in the darkness of things," uttered Thranduil, his back towards Thorin. "Don't be afraid."

And at the felling of those words, only heartache remained, and Thorin's throat lifted and convulsed in a loathing so entirely wretched, that his skin felt to have torn and broken raw against him. He stalked forward, spurned now to the very zenith of his essence, and bellowed what left had gone possibly unsaid.

"Spiteful serpent! Honorless! Beast! What do you want from me? What more could you take? I should kill you! May Mahal smite you! May all that you love be flayed before your eyes until the end of all days! _Ish kakhfe ai-'d dur-rugnu_—"

But then Thorin felt his tongue thaw somewhere deep into the duct of his throat, and with it his voice, for Thranduil's delicately layered robes had fallen from the slope of his left shoulder in a heavy spill of silver silks.

Thorin stilled, congealing.

But Thranduil did not stop there.

With his ringed hand he reached and brought forward the golden ribbons of his hair, tucking them against the white crescent of his tilted head, and in the candlelight, he seemed to have almost cradled into himself amidst the intake of a single breath, unveiling now the vulnerable blood-throb of his neck.

The rest of his robes, loosened as they were, were helpless not to fall from him.

They pooled themselves at his waist in a glimmering mesh, but only because he held them there, exposing now the entire naked planar of his back to the mercy of the open air.

Thorin, unable to control the quaking of his hands, watched in a wringed silence as Thranduil drifted ever further into the room until he stopped himself at the towering spires of his bedstead. A second more, and the rest of what clung to him fell to the ground in a deluge of fabric with only the pale length of his hair left to drape him.

Thorin immediately lost the ability to breathe.

"I have seen your stare," simpered Thranduil. "Your want, your _ache_, how eagerly you writhe in the vastness of your truest wish." He paused, allowing himself for the first time to laugh, and the sound of it was all, but never kind. "I understand that."

He turned then, presenting all that Thorin had ever dreamt of and more, but the moment itself had gone swiftly shredded, for Thorin had already spurred himself forward in a maddened rush with a strength in his stride so massive that even Thranduil could not steel himself well enough in the face of being so easily flung back into the bedding.

They fell into a tumble, with Thranduil sinking easily into the velvet mounds beneath him, and at first, Thorin entertained the notion of twisting together a rope out of Thranduil's hair so that perhaps he could strangle him with it, ending the torment once and for all.

His gall for it, of course, vanished into itself quite quickly the moment Thranduil had looked up at him with the great widened blues of his eyes, pupils heightened, an unspoken disbelief rent upon the parting of his lips as he struggled and thrashed to free away his wrists from the powerful clasp Thorin had managed to bruise them in somewhere far above with just one hand.

Almost helpless, almost panic;

But not enough.

Realizing this, the utter _thrill_ of it, Thorin's mouth sharpened into a grin, and with it, his hold on Thranduil's wrists. He leant then, towards the wretched salience of Thranduil's ear, breathing in the lichen tang of what was his golden hair.

"Aye, I wished you once," growled Thorin at last. "And it is a leech I wish only to slit apart. A burden, a _stain,_ a fault I have borne—a shame I will soon discard in the wake of your abasement, for I can bear it no more, this **filth** of you."

"Will you rape me, then?" spoke Thranduil in return, and the renewed smile he wore only grew with each word. "Will you stoop so low? Here, in my home?"

Thorin, nettled to the seams, reached then with his one free hand to seize Thranduil by the back of the hair, wrenching it in all harshness to the side.

"You play a dangerous game, _elf_," hissed Thorin, chuckling, and the sound of it was very crude. "But I tire, and I am finished with words."

And then Thorin sunk down, towards the pink of Thranduil's lips, crushing now what little distance had been left free between them.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first learned the taste of Thranduil, all else would be reduced in its value.

Long had he ached, long had he flogged himself in constant regret, longer had he bore this itch that never left;

This creature that caved him, that charmed him like a widow to its web.

And as he broke away for air and sunk himself instead for just one mindless moment into the silk tresses of Thranduil's hair, he felt only that Thranduil lied perfectly still now underneath the straddling of his weight, soft and warm and utterly bared, unabashed in the way that he stared directly up at Thorin with his eyes lidded low in a listless disdain.

And with each second, the scent of him only thickened and grew, curling deeper and deeper into the air as if Thranduil himself had willed it to: wood-sap and moss, an inked-in memory from the first time Thorin had ever sought him from behind the safety of walls, to all the times he'd looked on from neath the flicker of glances—so young and so blinded—in both lust and in hope, that perhaps this elvish fay of the wood would someday come to love him.

And Thranduil must see this even now like orc blood seeping through, an effortless conquest he had long ago construed.

And Thorin, spurned and ridiculed, would continue to bare this, know this, remember this, and burn.

"Look at me," snarled Thorin, and it did not help that Thranduil had dragged his eyes up towards him with the enthusiasm of a corpse. "You had better pray that your son is as keen of ear as one would think." He smirked, "But then would it not be a shame that he would rush to his father's aid only to see his naked legs wrapped about my waist? Would he not _weep_?"

Only then did Thranduil offer fret in the way his eyes had slightly darkened.

"You speak so freely, yet you are my prisoner," he scoffed after a moment. "And yet you continue to toil under the pretense of a throne you do not and will not ever have when I have that and so much more." He paused, grinning. "Or do I mistake your wandering hands?"

Incensed, Thorin jerked his hand from Thranduil's hair so that he could seize him instead by the face, reeling him in.

"You had best hope that you have been tried at least once before, O king, because I will show you no form of kindness. You think now that you have stolen from me all that you can, all that you must, but I know only so much better that in all of your miserable years of roaming this earth, you've no clue as to how long your body could possibly stand being torn open, pillaged, and _fucked_."

And though Thranduil might have attempted to steel himself against it, his body strung itself tight at the sound of Thorin's threat.

Seeing this, feeling this, Thorin crushed then his mouth against Thranduil's in an instant, all teeth and tongue with no care at all given for any broken skin.

At first, Thranduil squirmed—outraged—from underneath Thorin's weight with a force in his legs so great that even Thorin himself was left impressed.

But then Thranduil's struggles faded nearly soon as they came the moment Thorin had daringly angled his knee from beneath them so that it buried itself in between Thranduil's thighs, _pressing_.

The response was wicked, sordid, and even Thorin in all of his seven oceans of spite was genuinely shocked by the evident amount of Thranduil's interest, for if Thorin was at all hard, Thranduil lied even harder.

He grinned, viciously satisfied, and pulled away from Thranduil's mouth, painting him with the seam of his lips until at last he found the delicate pulse of Thranduil's neck to latch on to.

And Thorin, amidst his indulgence, had already girded himself at that point to be struck across the face by Thranduil's fist now that he had released the elf's wrists from the grip he had kept them in, expected to at least be spat upon or kicked or worse, but nothing.

If anything, Thranduil seemed to have long surrendered the use of his body, for he lied lax and silently panting as if Thorin were fucking into him already, brows knit and lips wet, his sylphlike arms stayed and crossed at the wrists of their own free will above the golden spill of his head.

"You want this," grit Thorin in between the harsh suckling of Thranduil's skin. "You toy and flirt with my rage, but you've wanted this. You've craved this just as I. And you might have had it, all _and so much more_, had you not been too proud to ask."

_"Ona ta a'amin_," shuddered Thranduil when Thorin ran his knee three times over against the entire hardened pole of his cock. "—please.."

Slowly, Thranduil brought up the length of his legs from the bed, lifting them, spreading them, and in turn cradling Thorin's figure against him in what seemed like an almost-embrace.

And Thorin, powerless not to bend at Thranduil's cajolery, quickly reached down and flung upon the elf king's leg over his shoulder before placing the girth of two fingers against Thranduil's cleft.

In this way, Thorin began to coax and push forward without the pretense of perhaps looking to make things more comfortable for Thranduil, breaching gently at first, _watching_, until at last he'd been buried halfway into Thranduil's hole. He looked then towards the direction of the elf's shivering breath, mouth parted and red, the stifling of his moans not enough to keep his mewling at bay.

Thorin relished at the sight, at the sweet melody of his foe's utter unbecoming, before going again to sink further in, stretching, until finally he'd sheathed himself inside to the bone of his knuckles. And there he stayed, shifting slowly, with his weight balanced on one arm as he leant further in.

There, Thranduil hung on the thin of a string, watching Thorin as Thorin watched him back from neath the frosted haze of his half-hooded eyes until finally Thorin pulled his fingers out to the tips, teasing, only to slam back in.

"You'd best bite your tongue," breathed Thorin when Thranduil had failed to hold back a moan, knowing full well that it was the sheer width of his fingers that had been the cause of it. "Unless, of course, you would prefer an audience."

"Must you.. _speak_ such things—" muttered Thranduil, but Thorin had already taken the liberty of fucking up into him once more, five different times.

And it was glorious, the way Thranduil's elfin body had curved up at the spine as if shocked, arching beautifully in the candlelight.

Immediately, Thorin felt his cock begin to rouse all the more from under his wraps, for Thranduil had lifted his arms up to wrap around his neck like swans entwined, sobbing for breath.

No control, no wryness of his tongue nor snobbery to show through in the trembling of Thranduil's body, only ever wordless, only ever babbling, taking all that Thorin gave him with the whetted hunger of a lover long neglected. Thorin was helpless not to groan in the thought of it, at the sound of it, at the bittersweet hisses that escaped Thranduil's lips whenever he sunk into him the most deeply, never stopping. And each time, Thranduil's cock only leapt, forgotten, against the pallor of his belly, tempting Thorin to perhaps reach down and grasp it.

But he would not.

"Let me.." whispered Thranduil midst his labored breathing. "Let me see you.."

"Have you not had your fill of me," chuckled Thorin, though he was also much out of breath.

"Ah—_ed' I'ear ar' elenea_—please—"

So, Thorin, granting Thranduil the mercy, slid his fingers out of the elf's battered hole after a brief moment of thinking, allowing Thranduil's leg to at last unhook and fall from his shoulder. Thranduil fell back into the bedding, eyes gleaming and chest heaving, watching in an all gasping silence as Thorin did away with his trappings and furs.

And when finally Thranduil's wish had been granted and Thorin sat on his haunches as bare as he'd been brought into the world, Thorin noticed with a great sneering pride that the elf could not stop himself from salivating at the sight of him had he even tried. But it wasn't only just that, it was also the way in which Thranduil's now-widened eyes had fallen directly towards Thorin's jutting cock, mouth parting at the sight.

Immediately, Thranduil sat up on his elbows.

"You could not—_it_ would not—"

"But it could," said Thorin. "And you will learn this."

Then, after pushing Thranduil down into the bed with one hand, Thorin kicked open his legs with the heft of one knee, making a place for himself against Thranduil's quivering body. And Thranduil, in all his raving desperation, writhed forward once, enough so that Thorin knew it as a last plea to have his cock touched, but Thorin only laughed, paying no heed.

Instead, he took himself in hand and brought forward both of Thranduil's legs upon his shoulders, pushing forward, until finally Thranduil's loosened hole lied vulnerable to the head of his prick.

"Look at me," demanded Thorin. And Thranduil did, albeit hesitantly. "Have you taken cock before?"

"No.." whispered Thranduil.

And Thorin could hear it all in the hesitant tremor of his voice without even having to ask:

In this manner, at least, Thranduil indeed had yet gone untouched.

**oOo**

When Thorin had first known the maddening feeling of being inside Thranduil, a vicious white heat would first froth from within him, thieving him of sense.

But he never once looked away from the elf king, still too beautiful and still too lucent even now that he lied skewered beneath him.

And Thranduil had opened up for him almost perfectly, with such tenuity, that the initial penetration of it had felt almost fated; a thing ordained.

And now that Thorin pressed himself further in—savoring every inch of sodden flesh that braced and clenched—he saw that Thranduil could no longer contain the broken cry that escaped him once Thorin had sunken to the base.

Thranduil begged to the ceiling, blathering, his eyes growing wide and then closing in a perpetual paradox of what Thorin guessed to be both pleasure and pain. And before Thorin could ever think to start properly fucking, Thranduil began to squirm from beneath him, hips rolling and swaying, as if hoping to somehow rid himself of Thorin's cock.

But Thorin (if he dared to assume, as he had never actually seen Thranduil fight), was the stronger, and held him down with a minimal effort.

He gripped down onto Thranduil's hips with both his hands, leaving marks, and at last, before Thranduil could once again rouse, Thorin dove forward, hammering to the full length of his cock in ten mighty blows that sent Thranduil's body into a bleating limpness, both inside and out.

"Bane of my life," growled Thorin as he pulled to the tip. "The thorn of it."

Then, when Thorin slipped once more inside, Thorin felt the coil of climax begin to twine at the hilt of his cock, and only then did he abandon all sense of reason before he once again hammered into Thranduil in a force that nearly broke the wooden spires of the bed, delivering perhaps one hundred thundering blows to Thranduil's hole in the space of a minute.

And nothing could ever beat it, be this sweet in all existence: fucking his enemy deep into the white silk of his own sheets, this thing that betrayed him—that **stained** him—this tearaway creature who had once held his heart and admiration, only to spurn it so low to the filth of the ground, only to deceive, only to _gloat_.

And as Thranduil reached now and again towards his lips, as he lied fucked again and again throughout the hour, Thorin could still not find it in him to kiss Thranduil in return, could not _bear_ it (because even he knew full well what waited: blood and war and death and the mountain and a throne he must by all means obtain), and so he only watched him, felt him, and spent within him when he could take no more.

And Thranduil bore it, cried out when he felt the rush of Thorin's seed, and in turn he spent upon his share against Thorin's stomach, marking it white like his skin.

"Stay," he said amidst his disheveled madness (for madness it could only be) when he reached up for Thorin's face with both hands. "Do not leave, and remain my prisoner. Darker things have come, things you could not think to defeat.. Abandon this folly, turn from it, _hate me_, do not return to the mountain."

"You fool," spoke Thorin. "You speak in riddles I do not care to understand."

But then Thranduil silenced him with his lips, and even then Thorin could not hope to stop him.

**oOo**

When Thorin learned that he could, in fact, exact his escape from Thranduil's clutches, he took first the opportunity of the elf king being summoned by his son at the late hour, feigning sleep.

And though Legolas lingered at the door far after Thranduil had rushed away through the halls of his palace, Thorin knew well that even a favored prince would not dare to question that of who or what lied seemingly naked in his father's bed.

Eventually, Legolas left, closing the door as it once was without a single word spoken.

Wasting no time, nor hinged with second thought, Thorin dressed in what he could find of his clothes before escaping through the same door, never once looking back.

Which wasn't so terribly bad or important, he supposed, because once he stepped into the fork of that particular hall, he met with Bilbo, his nephews, and all of the rest of his company.

And soon, with only the rightful reign of Erebor in mind, the forest of Mirkwood soon found itself somewhere far behind him, in the fog.

**oOo**

When Smaug had been stricken from the sky and Thorin had at last seeped his fingers into the gleaming treasures of the Lonely Mountain, he would learn firsthand the lust of gold.

Stricken now with an insatiable sickness of the mind, and with all the black armies of the Necromancer ascending by the infinite score, Thorin would come to learn what it was that Thranduil had warned him so boldly about.

But Thorin did no longer care much for things such as these, much less for Thranduil's doting, and so he made no move for peace—

But only war.

And when at last he saw the death of both Fili and Kili before his eyes as he'd once seen Thror's at the claws of Azog, he felt only the tears that he could not possibly shed now that he lied on the ground nearly bloodless, holed and splayed in filth and worse amongst a field of corpses.

But there was something else he felt amidst this retch of sadness, amidst the faraway sight of the mountain dimming into an orange sunset:

He felt the strain of someone lifting him, the touch of hair against his face;

The spill of it, the gold of it, like strings of threaded diamonds.

And when he looked up from neath the haze of death, he saw that it was Thranduil who held him, and that the warmth against the cold was his;

The dread of it, the ease of it, the peace of it..

And then nothing.

**oOo**

**goheno nin, adar - forgive me, father**

**adar, sina naugh, ta naa ascarer - father, this dwarf, it is an impetuous one**

**dina sii - be silent now**

**ana ta a'amin - give it to me**

**ed' I'ear ar' elenea - by the sea and stars**


End file.
